We all work in the internet security industry, and as such we're involved with a wide range of technologies, markets and people. Our collective blog is a space for our insights, observations and interests...

(N.B. The opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors, and not those of Smoothwall ltd or Smoothwall inc.)

Monday, November 24, 2014

It’s nearly here again folks, and the clues are all there:
planning the office Christmas party, your boss humming Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer and an armada of Amazon packages arriving.

Which brings me
nicely to the topic of this blog: online shopping at work.

It’s official; we are
‘in love’ with online shopping. At this time of the year, it’s harder to resist
temptation. Retailers conjure up special shopping events like Black Friday and
Cyber Monday - all aimed at getting us to part with our hard earned cash. While
online retailers rub their hands in anticipation of December 1st, for companies
without proper web security, the online shopping season could turn out to be
the nightmare before Christmas.

In a recent survey by RetailMeNot, a digital coupon
provider, 86 percentof working consumers admitted that they planned to spend
at least some time shopping or browsing online for gifts during working hours
on Cyber Monday. That equates to a whole lot of lost productivity and
unnecessary pressure on your bandwidth.

To help prevent distraction and clogged bandwidth, I know of
one customer, I’m sure there are others, who is allowing his employees time to
shop from their desks in their lunch breaks. He’s a smart man - productivity
stays high and employees happy.

But productivity isn’t the only concern for the IT
department – cyber criminals are out in force at this time of year, trying to
take advantage of big hearts and open wallets with spam and phishing emails.
One click on a seemingly innocent link could take your entire network down.

To keep such bad tidings at bay, here’s a web security
checklist to ensure your holiday season is filled with cheer not fear.

1.Flexible Filtering. Set time quotas to allow online shopping
access at lunchtimes, or outside of core hours. Whatever you decide is
reasonable, make sure your employees are kept in the loop about what you
classify as acceptable usage and communicate this through an Acceptable Usage
Policy.

2.Invest in Anti-malware and Anti-spam Controls. As inboxes
start to fill with special offer emails, it gets more difficult to
differentiate between legitimate emails and spam. These controls will go some
way towards separating the wheat from the chaff.

3. Issue Safety Advice to Your Employees. Ask employees to
check the legitimacy of a site before purchasing anything. The locked padlock
symbol indicates that the purchase is encrypted and secure. In addition, brief
them to be alert for phishing scams and not to open emails, or click on links
from unknown contacts.